ATLANTA — A City of Atlanta Department of Parks and Recreation crew and an Atlanta Public School (APS) teacher saved two women and a baby from a raging house fire in northwest Atlanta, Tuesday.
The crew said they were on their way to do maintenance at a nearby park when they saw a house on Hamilton E. Holmes Drive in flames.
"Our first reaction was to jump out to try to help the people in the house," Quazavier Dupre explained.
The men told 11Alive they did just that. They immediately got out of the car, grabbed their shovels and ran up to the home to bust out the windows and knock down the door.
"We all burst windows and kicked doors in ... to do God's will," Dupre stated.
That's when they discovered two women, a man and a baby inside of the home.
"One lady she jumped out - she was naked ... fully naked. We clothed her," one man said. Another man said the lady began screaming about her baby being inside of the burning duplex-home. "We continued on trying to get the baby, the lady out the house and another guy."
"Anything for a baby, though. I got little boys myself," Darrell McClendon explained.
"We weren't going to stop until we got that baby," Cornell White added.
The men said the smoke was extremely heavy - to the point that it was almost impossible to see. Still, they were able to grab the women and baby, who were all taken to the hospital.
"He pulled the baby out the house," Dupre said, as he pointed to McClendon.
"This lady right here ... she helped us out with a calm mind," Dupre said pointing to the APS teacher.
While they were not able to get the man out due to the intense flames, when fire crews arrived, they were able to save the unidentified man, who was unconscious. The man was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries, according to Atlanta Fire Sgt. Cortez Stafford, who corroborated the men's story.
Stafford said the infant is stable at the hospital; one man and a woman are critical but stable, and another woman had second- and third-degree burns.
The men said they feel really good about what they did.
"We did nothing, but God's will. We give it all to God," Dupre said.
"I just feel like a blessing," White said.
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